Jon and Libby

What did your 2024 look like? After an initial gig in a freezing Stoke-on-Trent at Electric Tentacle in December 2023, our 2024 saw us play 32 gigs, travel over 1,200 miles, visit 14 towns and cities, endure 1 onstage disaster, avoid several more, have untold laughs, and form lasting friendships that will endure for years. If it hadn't been for contracting covid in late October, I'm sure we could have hit 40 gigs this year because they're so much fun to do. This nasty little bug was a walk in the park when I contracted it a year earlier, but now it was like a completely different virus. I was in bed shivering and gasping for breath for a week, couldn't swallow, had a painful lymph node under my jaw, spent weeks in the mental "covid fog", fought for breath just walking upstairs, and ten weeks later still can't smell properly. It was most definitely NOT a walk in the park or anywhere else this time, despite what naysayers might claim. Anyway, the year also s...

  Right in the heart of Chorlton's wealthy and bustling Wilbram Road, Dulcimer Bar is a trendy drinkery with an eccelectic cliantele and, more importantly, a fully equipped venue upstairs complete with bar and all the sound gear an EMOM night could want, including a selection of active DI boxes.  Yes, after a short hiatus to find a new venue, Spacenoodle is back! A short walk from the excellent Totally Wired night at The Lloyds (which returns early in 2025 when the new upstairs venue is finished), these two nights will perfectly bookend the main strip through Chorlton. This was a slightly subdued, almost soft relaunch to the mighty nights that used to happen at the cavernous NIAMOS Centre in Hulme. The inestimable Heaton Norris Light Vessel Automatic had to pull out at the last momennt so there were only three of us to grace the stage that night. This was a pity, because his sound is sublime and deeply emotional. First up was Mythical Brewery, delivering their trademark semi-i...

It's a sign! A sign of a terrible few weeks!   C19. The 'Rona. Sniphilis. Call it what you will, but this year's covid 19 strain is a virus very much trying to stay relevant with a raging sore throat, choking mucus, and extreme fatigue that lasts for weeks. Becasue of this, I've been somewhat necessarily quiet while I recover. Trust me to land a dose just before I was due for my yearly jab. So, here's a brief catch-up. We had a great evening at the lovely Derby EMOM in late October, as livestreamed here . Lee Gratorex has branched out from streaming the Derby EMOM to take in other events, the frist of which was the October Electric Tentacle in Stoke. This is a really good development, bringing the evenings to a wider audience. It's like the scene has its own live TV show! Next up for us was the inaurgural Wrexham EMOM, hosted at the Ty Pawb arts centre. This is an excellent venue. The audience was the public, and was very much up for hearing some new stuff. Ever...

Conwy Brewery, all set up and ready to play. Just add acts...   A couple of weeks ago, we braved the Sunday drivers on the North Wales Expressway to pay a return visit Modulate TV's North Wales EMOM at Conwy Brewery, just south of Colwyn Bay. This time, I believed Marjorie the sat nav when she directed me down an unassuming single track lane, and we arrived in time and without a hitch for a diverse afternoon and early evening of live electronic music. First up, we had Jaques N' Their Box. Layers of soundscapes, industrialia, drones, chanting choirs, live sources from a small mic used percussively, and existential angst courtesy of live vocals. Etchasketch is an established EMOM performer and was also acting as host for the night. His rig consists of what looks like an IXO One controller feeding into an insanely complex modular rig with lots of live tweaking possibilities. I'm not a modular synthesist, so any modular setup looks insanely complex to me! His sound has a distin...

  Hymns For Robots is a revered EMOM-style night that everyone in the community seems to have heard of. Curated, so not quite a pure EMOM, the night is currently into its third year according to my calculations (though I may be wrong), and we were lucky enough to get a slot at HfR #40. There were only four acts this night, and each of us had a 25-minute slot to really show what we can do. So, up the M60, M61, and M6 for a couple of hours we went, and by twilight we were pulling into the car park opposite the venue for what would be gig number 25 on this strange musical odyssey of ours. First up was the curiously named GnomeFoam, complete with an excellent Ernie (or is it Bert?) raving hat. Good vibes, breakbeats and DnB were very much in evidence. He did mention to me before he went on that he sometimes gets nervous, but I think he has a great act and the audience loved it. No need for nerves when you get that kind of reaction!   Next up, we had Sylvia And I. This was a beguil...

PP Roy being announced by host Tom.   It was back to The Lloyds for Totally Wired #4 last Thursday, to do battle with once more with the unquiet ghost of Martin Hannett. Maybe he was bored tormenting the performers, or maybe there was a priest in the audience, but the new PA was superb, and it was good and loud! First to the tables was PP Roy with his unique blend of beats and 60s lounge music. This guy must have one heck of a record collection. I get a chilled St Etienne vibe from his work. See what you think... We were up next and after discovering that we could play for longer than planned, the set list became somewhat casual. Being behind the speakers wasn't the best for recording sound, but it went down OK on the night.   Rollmopski took to the stage next, with their unique blend of Prophet 5, modular, Theremin and slide guitar creating a sound that was in turn bouncy and plaintive.   Next, we were in for an interactive treat courtesy of Thunkist and his special padd...

  As I wrote in the last entry about NIAMOS, Hulme, like the rest of Manchester, is in a constant state of renewal. Hulme isn't "Hulme" any more. It is filled with culture, and an involved community. Gone are the dreaded "Crescents", replaced by smart housing association properties with gardens. There's even a bike hire stand! All that SpaceNoodlr needs now is support from the EMOM community to come down and make a night of it, because it really is a good night. The space is BIG, the PA is loud and robust - you literally can't hurt it - and the people are always welcoming and learning as they go. It just needs more people playing in that big space. Last week, we were treated to truly diverse sounds, not least of which was LIEI and her melifluous integration of Theramin and Japanese-inspired music. Great to chill to, with a gorgeous Moog Theramin looking like it was straight out of The Jetsons! Take a listen, and also look at that stage. When else are you...

The Mighty Nowhere!   Last Thursday was another chance to get back over the Pennines, and a journey through landscapes that could easily melt your eyeballs with their beauty. Yes, it was time for the Holmfirth EMOM at Nowhere again!  This time, Martin Christie started us off with a funky track played on a tiny box of tricks. If it wasn't called "Welcome to EMOM" I don't know what else it could be called. He also told us about setting up the first speculative EMOM a few years ago at Fuel Bar in Manchester and watching it grow like Topsy and become a global phenomenon. Very inspirational stuff.   Martin and his box of tricks! So, next up was a man with quite literally a box of tricks. In this case, a cardboard box holding his kit. How Buildings Fail is a new name to me, and put me in mind of The Fall, or some of the spoken word events I've been to where Mark E. Smith has performed.   Another box of tricks, this time a cardboard one, courtesy of How Buildings Fail....

  This blog post is dedicated to Inky Da Kat. She was always such a big supporter of the EMOM community, and will be sadly missed by all of us.   Well, we've managed to get to the giddy heights of 21 EMOM sets now, and with the confidence of ignorant naivety, I've started to notice some rules of thumb about what makes an event go with a bang for all concerned.    I've split them into a list of Dos and Don'ts for performers, organisers and sound engineers. these are just things that have occurred to me. I hope you agree. If I've missed anything, or you wish to argue that I'm wrong, please get in touch, but be kind or I'll set Libby on you. Thanks to the vibrant EMOM community, this is a living document and I'll strive to keep it updated as a resource and fount of knowledge as more comes to light.  Performers: Do: Level your set. Run through the whole thing with a free LUFS meter, such as Youlean, on the very end of the master bus to make sure that the lev...

  1 Behold, the mighty Muson synthesizer! It was back to Totally Wired in Chorlton-cum-Hardy last Thursday, and the scene of the previous ghostly goings-on during election night in June. The Lloyds is a big venue, and I like playing there a lot because it has a "lay" crowd of very appreciative Thursday night drinkers who are up for something different. This time, I hoped to make peace with the unquiet spirit of Martin Hannett. Did I manage it, or did he cause even more spectral mischief?  PP Roy was on first, and was using the most glorious synthesizer I've ever seen. A Muson synthesizer from 1978. His wife told me later that she bought for next to nothing. Though limited in scope, this baby has a 10-note sequencer and (according to the spec at Polynomial ) 2 note polyphony and (ahem) MIDI! Quite how the makers implemented that last facility several years before it was even a twinkle in Dave Smith's eye is probably just wishful thinking on the part of a seller. Spea...

  Back for the third time at Dubrek! Last week saw Libby and I hurtle (speed cameras permitting) back over the Pennines again towards Derby and the revered Dubrek Studio for our third performance there, this time for the second birthday livestream. Ably led as usual by Marjorie the Satnav, we avoided most of the traffic to arrive bang on time, and even found a free parking space right outside the venue. Google Maps (A.K.A Marjorie, because why not?) also has the ability to tell you when to set off for a gig. Save the destination on your phone and as the dreaded hour approaches, tap it to load it every so often, and it will calculate the current best route and give you an estimated time of arrival. At teatime, as rush hour subsides, the journey time tends to fall, but the time of arrival tends to remain the same until the optimum time to leave, when the arrival time begins to get slightly later. This is the best time to leave, so load up the car, get the tunes on, and go and have so...

The bay window at The Lloyds, where legendary producer Martin Hannett used to hold court. They say that Chorlton local and legendary producer Martin Hannett used to randomly mess with people's gear to throw them off their guard and thereby open up their creativity in the studio. Whether this was true or not, I don't know, but what I do know is that gear in all forms was definitely playing up when Marjorie directed us into Manchester on election night and to Totally Wired at The Lloyds Hotel. First the car park. Only one tichet machine was working, and it was refusing cards. Taking the warning signs of ANPR cameras seriously, I tried to feed it with enough pound coins to let me stay until at least 11pm. But the machine had other ideas, only accepting two of them. I could only stay until 10pm. I'd planned to stay late, then get home and stay up to see the first general election results come in. Grumpily, I walked through the curiously gentrified "urban village" and ...